Isofotón and Lancaster Group ink PV deal in Kazakhstan

Under a MoU, Isofotón will develop PV and polysilicon projects in Kazakhstan. Image: Isofotón.

Spanish PV developer Isofotón and Lancaster Group, a Kazakhstan-based private company operating in several industries including energy, have inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop PV projects in Kazakhstan.

The MoU was signed by Ángel Luis Serrano, Isofotón’s President, and Nurzhan Janabekov, the CEO of Lancaster Group, on 25 February.

Under the MoU, Isofotón will develop PV and polysilicon projects in Kazakhstan. The company will also co-operate with Centesil, an independent research centre for polysilicon, in order to share its technology expertise and help the company to achieve vertical integration in its value chain.

Serrano stated that this agreement is a “key step in reinforcing our international presence, in this case on the Central Asian market, and reaching the integration of all the value chain within PV business, something capital nowadays and that demonstrates our strength and flexibility”.

The agreement is in line with Isofotón international expansion strategy. The company — which has 1,500MW of PV projects in the pipeline for the next two years — is aiming to strengthen its position in several emerging markets including Latin America and Asia. Recently, the company opened a new office in Singapore to drive its PV business in Australia and South East Asia.

Now that the PV industry has unquestionably entered a new growth phase, all eyes are on which technologies will win through into the mainstream of PV manufacturing. PERC, n-type, p-type bifacial, heterojunction – all have become familiar terms in the ever-growing constellation of solar cell technologies. The question is which will offer manufacturers what they are looking for in improving efficiencies and cutting costs.

Although the past few years have proved extremely testing for PV equipment manufacturers, falling module prices have driven solar end-market demand to previously unseen levels. That demand is now starting to be felt by manufacturers, to the extent that leading companies are starting to talk about serious capacity expansions later this year and into 2015. This means that the next 12 months will be a critical period if companies throughout the supply chain are to take full advantage of the PV industry’s next growth phase.